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Jimena Veloz 


Featured projects
  1. Renewable Ravenswood 
  2. Radical Imagination for Racial Justice
  3. Cities RISE 

Analyzing 
  1. TOD for Mexican Cities
  2. Quincy Station Areas

Proposing Alternatives
  1. Sustainable mobility manuals
  2. Proposing mobility solutions

Building Alternatives
  1. Camina, Haz Ciudad 
  2. Cities RISE
  3. Radical Imagination for Racial Justice
  4. Renewable Ravenswood

Telling stories
  1. El Coche Nos Cuesta 
  2. Mapping Memories 
  3. Change at the Edge

Mark

Cities RISE 

New York State 
2018 - 2019


Photo credits: 

Clients: New York State Attorney General’s Office 

Partners: 
  • NYS municipalities: Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Elmira, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, White Plains
  • Technical assistance: Tolemi, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Enterprise Community Partners
  • Consultants: Ibrahim Abul-Matin, Esther Kang and Durrel Coleman

Role in project
  • Project management for a team of 8 staff, 3 consultants and 3 partner orgs
  • Strategy and coordination of work in 10 cities across NYS 
  • Research and development of Hester Street’s code enforcement framework
  • Development of engagement tools 
  • Training and technical assistance for city staff in 3 cities 
  • Feedback and support for funding decisions by AG’s office

As part of my work at Hester Street, I led a team working on the Cities RISE initiative, which aimed to build the capacity of municipalities to deal with the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, transform problem properties and revitalize  neighborhoods. In the project’s first phase, we worked to better understand the way equity choices play out in different code enforcement scenarios and city contexts, and how they affect the way in which the city addresses issues like foreclosure, abandonment and the disparate impacts of code enforcement on low-income communities of color. We developed a framework for identifying equity choice points in cities’ code enforcement processes and systems for advancing equitable community engagement in housing and code enforcement work. 

In phase 2, we expanded our work to support 32 agencies across 10 upstate NY cities to build their capacity to engage communities and incorporate feedback into code enforcement practices in order to make them more equitable, just and inclusive. Our team made 50 site visits across NY state between December 2018 and August 2019 to support cities in conducting meaningful and inclusive engagement processes. In addition to including communities in the conversation around code enforcement, our technical assistance also supports cities as they create a planning process to re-envision how they tackle code enforcement issues in an equitable way. Subsequently, cities were able to apply for an innovation grant of up to $1 million dollars from the NYS Attorney General’s office to implement these key changes. 

Project links

Publications 

      
Mark

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